Unusual destruction and enhancement of superfluidity of atomic Fermi gases by population imbalance in a one-dimensional optical lattice

Abstract

We study the superfluid behavior of a population imbalanced ultracold atomic Fermi gases with a short range attractive interaction in a one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice, using a pairing fluctuation theory. We show that, besides widespread pseudogap phenomena and intermediate temperature superfluidity, the superfluid phase is readily destroyed except in a limited region of the parameter space. We find a new mechanism for pair hopping, assisted by the excessive majority fermions, in the presence of continuum-lattice mixing, which leads to an unusual constant BEC asymptote for $T_c$ that is independent of pairing strength. In result, on the BEC side of unitarity, superfluidity, when it exists, may be strongly enhanced by population imbalance.

Added the supplementary materials, which somehow seems to be missing from previous submissions